Policemen Attacked In Dagestan, Ingushetia and Karachaevo-Cherkessia

Dagestan’s Interior Ministry reported today (November 4) that two residents of Dagestan’s Tlyaratinsky district had been arrested for illegal possession of weapons. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition and explosives were seized from a 49-year-old resident of the village of Tlyarat, while ammunition and a sniper’s rifle were seized from a 25-year-old resident of the village of Kamidukh (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 4).

Yesterday (November 3), an unidentified armed person walked into a grocery store in the Dagestani city of Kaspiisk and shot up shelves of alcoholic beverages. No one was hurt in the incident (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 3).

On November 2, two policemen were shot to death in the village of Babayurt in Dagestan’s Babayurtsky district. The incident occurred when the two road patrol officers tried to stop a car, which kept on driving. The officers gave chase and the vehicle stopped two kilometers outside of the village, after which two persons emerged from the vehicle with automatic weapons and shot the policemen, who died on the spot. The shooters managed to escape, and a large number of 7.62 mm shell casings were found at the scene of the shooting (www.rbcdaily.ru, November 2). A burned out vehicle that police believe was used by the killers of the two policemen was later found on the Khasavyurt-Babayurt highway in the Babyurtsky district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 2).

That same day, the head of administration of Dagestan’s Khivsky district, Salman Alaev, was shot to death outside his house in the village of Chuvek. According to an unnamed official in the Dagestani branch of the federal Investigative Committee, the attackers escaped in a car and shot and wounded a policeman who gave chase (RIA Novosti, November 2). The Dagestani Interior Ministry announced today (November 4) that a 32-year-old resident of the village of Kandik had been arrested in connection with the killing of Alaev. According to the ministry, police seized a variety of weapons and ordnance from the suspect, including a RGD grenade, a detonator, 77 5.45 mm cartridges for a Kalashnikov automatic rifle and ten grams of a substance that appeared to be marijuana (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 4).

On November 1, three Interior Ministry servicemen and a policeman were wounded in a shootout with a group of rebels near the village of Vashanamakhi in Dagestan’s Sergokalinsky district. One of the three Interior Ministry servicemen was hospitalized in grave condition. There was no word on casualties among the insurgents, who managed to escape (www.rbcdaily.ru, www.kavkaz-uzel, Interfax, November 2).

The Dagestani branch of the federal Investigative Committee reported on November 1 that a suspected rebel was killed during a special operation in a wooded area near the village of Ishkarta in Dagestan’s Buinaksk district. Several rebels were discovered during the operation, one of whom was killed in a shootout. The slain rebel, identified as Viktor Surgutov, is suspected in the killing of 62-year-old hunter in the same wooded area on October 29. Surgutov, a resident of Buinaksk who reportedly earlier lived in Krasnodar Krai, was identified by the RIA Dagestan news agency as a “Russian Wahhabi” – apparently meaning he was an ethnic Russian convert to Islam (www.kavkaz-uzel, November 1).

On October 31, bomb disposal experts defused four explosive devices discovered near a power transmission line in the Gyumrinsky Pass in Dagestan’s Untsukulsky district. The previous day, a bomb exploded at a power transmission line tower in the same area. The tower was damaged but electricity supplies were not interrupted (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 31).

Also on October 31, a law-enforcement source told RIA Dagestan that the body of a 62-year-old resident of the village of Ishkarta in the Buinaksk district, Zeinulla Ustrakhanov, had been found in a wooded area near the village along with the body of his hunting dog. According to the source, Ustrakhanov went out hunting on October 29, ran into a group of rebels and was shot and killed (RIA Dagestan, October 31).

On October 30, two suspected rebels were killed in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district. The incident took place when police stopped a vehicle near the village of Serbryakovki and those inside allegedly opened fire. An automatic rifle, a pistol and a large quantity of ammunition were found in the vehicle. The slain suspected rebels were identified as Magomed Magomedov, a resident of the Kizlyar district village of Yasnaya Polyana who was wanted for killing a fellow villager in 2010, and Magomed Abdurakhmanov, a resident of the Kizlyar district village of Pervomaisky (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 31).

On October 29, three unidentified attackers fired from a vehicle on a convoy of Interior Ministry troops and police who were accompanying the convoy on the outskirts of the village of Solnechnoye in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district. No one was hurt in the incident (RIA Dagestan, October 30).

On October 28, an Interior Ministry serviceman was killed when unidentified gunmen fired on a group of Interior Ministry and police officers carrying out a search in the village of Bairam-Aul in Dagestan’s Khasavyurt district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 28).

In Ingushetia, unidentified attackers fired on a car carrying a police officer, Magomed Dakhkilgov, on November 2. The car was damaged but no one was hurt in the incident, which took place near the Nazran district village of Kantyshevo. Meanwhile, police were searching for a group of seven rebels involved in a shootout with security forces between the villages of Alkhasty and Arshty in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district on November 1. Several law-enforcement officers were wounded in the shootout, including an Interior Ministry serviceman who was shot in the head and hospitalized in Vladikavkaz in neighboring North Ossetia.(www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 2).

In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, one policeman was killed and two seriously wounded on October 29 when they tried to stop a car in the village of Malyi Uchkeken and those inside the vehicle opened fire. The attackers’ vehicle was later found abandoned (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 29).

In North Ossetia, a woman was wounded on October 28 when four gunmen in a car opened fire on a minibus in which three people were traveling on the Kavkaz highway near the village of Brut. The minibus was being driven by a resident of Ingushetia (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, October 28).